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Apple CEO Tim Cook requests and receives a 40% pay cut
- Maursault 4y ago[flagged]
- moffkalast 4y agoTim Apple doesn't request what Tim Apple wants for Tim Apple, Tim Apple requests what Tim Apple receives because Tim Apple is... Tim Apple.
- herendin 4y agoI wish we could all be mature enough that such pointless symbolic gestures were not necessary. This causes no hardship for Tim and makes no non-negligible impact on Apple's financials or employee wellbeing
- motoxpro 4y agoBy that logic he should have just kept is salary what it was. His salary now is about .05% of the companies revenue. That would be like the CEO of Mailchimp making 350k
- throwaway5959 4y agoI’m curious what your reaction would be if he got a 40% pay increase. Frankly it’s refreshing to see a CEO cut his own pay vs continuously increasing it regardless of how well the company performs.
- herendin 4y ago>I’m curious what your reaction would be if he got a 40% pay increase. It would be equally performative. This is morality theater. I'd only question his judgment about public relations. I do understand the reasoning for this adjustment of his salary. I'm simply saying I wish it was not necessary. It's sad.
- jklinger410 4y agoApparently you think Tim Cook already has an infinite amount of money. In that case, many leading CEOs are just taking symbolic salaries to do their jobs. I wonder why they even bother.
- juve1996 4y agoWhat does "refreshing" even mean? What would be refreshing is an adequate social safety net. Not mega rich getting slightly less megarich.
- throwaway5959 4y agoI don’t think those two are remotely related to each other. You could drain the wealth of the top 1000 people to zero and still not support a social safety net in perpetuity. To put some numbers behind it, the 735 billionaires in the world are worth $4.7 trillion total. Spread evenly across only 300 million people that’s only $15.6k each. Then that money is all gone.
- juve1996 4y agoYou've created a strawman here. First, a safety net wouldn't apply to 300 million people, only a small percentage of that who need it when it's necessary. Second, I'm not suggesting it is solely funded by taxing the megarich. Other nations already offer healthcare. This isn't mathematically infeasible, it's been done elsewhere, and done for years.
- bsaul 4y agosymbolic gestures constitute a large part of the fabric of society. Saying "thank you" to someone doesn't provide any value, yet you do it, and people appreciate it.
- herendin 4y ago>symbolic gestures constitute a large part of the fabric of society. In fact, we all know that saying Thank you may provide real value to both sides, because we mean it But meaningless gestures, such as a billionaire at a wealthy and healthy company taking a paycut, harm and devalue our social fabric
- wins32767 4y agoI find it encouraging that our institutions are able to begin to course correct, that's reknitting the frayed social fabric from my perspective.
- Kukumber 4y agoClearly you don't understand.. It affects the morale of your employees, knowing even your execs bear the price of struggle helps with mental health It's documented and Nintendo applied it countless times during its history, look at the result today https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/5/4496512/why-nintendos-satoru-iwata-refuses-to-lay-off-staff https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/5/4496512/why-nintendos-sator... I laugh at these companies laying off random people instead of cleaning up execs/managers, they treat their workforce like livestock, no wonder they are showing poor results lately
- quitit 4y agoThis isn't a PR exercise. Context is needed as below: 1. Shareholders have a "say-on-pay" vote, this is non-binding, but gives the board an idea of shareholder attitudes. 2. Institutional Shareholder Services raised concerns with their clients about Tim Cook's pay and requested that they vote against Tim's proposed package. 3. The approval vote dropped to 64% (usually around 95%). 4. Members of the compensation team engaged shareholders for an idea about where to set compensation. Tim then requested that.
- galoisscobi 4y agoIsn’t it fun to move goalposts! On layoff threads, people comment that the CEOs “taking full responsibility” should cut exec pay. Now we have a company that hasn’t had any layoffs and the CEO is taking a paycut and it’s a pointless symbolic gesture.
- herendin 4y agoI moved my goalposts?
- saghm 4y agoThe goalpost comment really isn't necessary; there are a lot of people on this site, and it's inevitable that conflicting opinions will get expressed. I think there's an interesting point to be made about how widely differing expectations can make it difficult for public figures to avoid criticism from one group or another, but it's muddled by the dubious assumption that people commenting on articles are some monolithic unit rather than a varying set of individuals from one article to the next, each of whom have potentially unique perspectives and aren't necessarily the same people who commented on a different thread.
- fsckboy 4y agoif it's different people making the comments, then they don't need to be consistent. and if the same, then if their outlook has class struggle leanings, they're being entirely consistent, capitalist class bad.
- jklinger410 4y agoIt's insulting to say that someone giving up a potential income amount that I will never achieve cumulatively in my entire lifetime is symbolic and pointless.
- layer8 4y agoThis just demonstrates that shareholders do have a say, which presumably is how it should be.
- blululu 4y agoConsider the growing list of CEO who have "taken full responsibility" for layoffs without taking on any of the downside. Even on a symbolic level this is the right thing to do, but practically speaking it signals some sense of skin in the game which is sadly lacking from CEO's who let go of staff without acknowledging that it was a failure of their management in any material terms.
- juve1996 4y agoCEOs are too rich to ever have skin in the game. It's a meaningless exercise. Tim Cook will never feel the pain of a layoff like someone at the genius bar.
- EligibleDecoy 4y agoHere's the relevant excerpt from the SEC filing (page 11, edited for brevity): """ The Compensation Committee evaluates and makes compensation decisions prior to the start of each fiscal year... The Compensation Committee balanced shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance, and a recommendation from Mr. Cook to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received. The Compensation Committee ... believes [the incentive changes] are responsive to shareholder feedback, while continuing both to align pay with performance and to recognize Mr. Cook’s outstanding leadership. Mr. Cook’s 2023 target total compensation is $49 million, a reduction of over 40% from his 2022 target total compensation. ... [T]he Compensation Committee also intends to position Mr. Cook’s annual target compensation between the 80th and 90th percentiles relative to our primary peer group for future years. The percentage of performance-based RSUs granted to Mr. Cook was increased from 50% to 75% of his 2023 target equity award and the percentage of his performance-based RSUs will be at least 75% of his target equity awards for future years. The time-based RSUs awarded to Mr. Cook for 2023 provide for pro-rata instead of full vesting in the event of retirement during the term of the award. The Compensation Committee intends to maintain this same structure for future years. """
- bilekas 4y agoImagine 49 million being a 40% cut in your salary. Poor guy.
- EligibleDecoy 4y agoTim, despite heading one of the top performing publicly traded companies has taken a pay cut to somewhere between 80th-90th percentile of "their peers". But this does not seem as impressive knowing only 64% of shareholders supported his 2021 compensation (compared to 95% in 2020). Looks like Alpahabet is cutting exec compensation as well. But hey, I mean as far as gestures go, this at least in line with "taking responsibility" for company performance. Better than not taking one, I suppose.
- ripvanwinkle 4y agoIf this happens at more companies, eventually the entire field will come down meaningfully so that the compensation at the 80th percentile might become the 90th percentile over time
- jjeaff 4y agoApple hasn't had big layoffs yet. My guess is that this is a PR move preceding a layoff announcement soon to come.
- bmitc 4y agoTim Cook is a billionaire. Who cares?
- cpncrunch 4y agoPeople care because it shows that Apple (and Tim Cook) are listening to their shareholders.
- bmitc 4y agoSo is it fair to say that the title is misleading given that the shareholders, specifically institutional shareholders, requested the decrease in pay and Cook simply obliged? Also, institutional shareholders are just other billionaire individuals and institutions. I think I care even less about their financials. If reductions in pay of executives somehow made it to consumers, then that would be interesting.
- mkraft 4y agoyou know you’re rich when
- akmarinov 4y agoGoogle, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon CEOs: “Yeah, we are doing layoffs, that’s totally my fault and I take the whole blame.” - they cut 10-15% of workforce, no repercussions for them Apple CEO: “no layoffs here, but maybe cut my salary by 40%” And yes, I know $50 million is couch change for Tim Apple
- CoolGuySteve 4y agoYeah, how about if you lay off more than 1% of a publicly traded company, top level executive compensation must be 0 for the year. Right now there's a misaligned incentive to perform layoffs in order to appease investors (including those in the boardroom) and pump the stock price even if the company is doing well.
- 1123581321 4y agoThat would be trivially gamed by either requiring more compensation up front or the CEO simply behaving against the interests of the company during hard times.
- CoolGuySteve 4y agoCEOs currently get paid either way, either by golden parachutes and retention bonuses when the company fails or by big paydays when the company grows. It's in the best interest of the shareholders that the CEO of a failing company either have faith that it will turn around or negotiate an acquisition. I don't believe this is the case with current executive compensation structures. And at least this penalty would be an incentive towards shrinking the company via attrition instead of disrupting the lives of thousands of employees and shocking the labour market.
- 1123581321 4y agoI understand your sentiment and I agree that a slow trickle of attrition, if executed well and not coupled with an overly conservative hiring rate, would be one of the better side effects of your proposal.
- uuddlrlrbaba 4y agoThis seems mostly to be a gesture towards some approximation of solidarity with staff during a time of mass layoffs in the industry. And I think it's a good move, if only to help make apple staff feel slightly more comfortable in their jobs. And help keep productivity and timelines on track.
- _yb2s 4y agoLet's start a gofundme, so he can afford food for his family.
- adamwong246 4y agoTim knows his employees are not stupid. That's why he hired them- they are smart, smart enough to know when they are being led to the shed out back. And Tim also know that that frightened cows produce bad milk. So he makes the smart move to keep his employees close, even at the expense of some short term loss, and as a bonus, he looks like a saint in comparison to all the other CEO's who shed their workers like dead weight.
- SettembreNero 4y agoAlso worth mentioning that he got a ~%500 raise in 2021
- artogahr 4y agoNot sure why this isn't mentioned more often.
- verall 4y agoFor comparison, Jensen's (Nvidia CEO) total compensation was $23.7M in FY2022.
- martin1975 4y agoIf this staves laying people off, then I'm all for it.
- zactato 4y agoIs this more aimed at Shareholder happiness or internal perception among employees?
- couchdive 4y agoah, isn't the bulk of compensation in stock anyways?
- sophacles 4y agoIf only there was more textual information as a supplement to the headline. I imagine such a supplement (which I'm going to call "article" since it's a fun word) would provide details about the headline. In this case, such an article would maybe explain why that was happening... i don't know, say maybe investors not approving of his salary the same anymore. I imagine the article might go into whether that's salary or total comp, and maybe a breakdown of what that total comp means. Bonus, what I imagine to be a decent article they would even mention restructuring of incentives if that was involved. What a world that would be.
- stefanos82 4y agoTo me this looks like a smart move on Tim's behalf, because if layoffs are coming, he will say "hey, I did my part and still things did not work they way we expected to; so please accept my sincere apologies in advance, but we need to layoff some teams...I hope you understand!" I could be wrong, but it has some form of logic in it...
- swiftpoll 4y agoAbove a certain pay I don't think money matters unless it's a large purchase. Like a yacht.